That’s fair, but while Becca always stresses that she thinks I’m throwing myself into the ocean of love without anything to protect me from the waves, she’s too scared to ever leave the damn dock. And of course, I could stress the whole You can’t find love if you don’t take a risk thing, but I know she’ll just say she’s perfectly fine with that. It’s like she can’t do anything without her parents popping up in the back of her head and chaining her down.

“Look, let me handle my own love life,” Becca says. “Go get lost in fantasizing over guys you’ll never see again.”

I ignore her comment and say, “I’m your best friend and the romance expert in our duo. Helping with your love life is kind of my job.”

She groans. “Just let me figure things out over here, okay? You’re like a thousand miles away. It doesn’t make sense for you to try to steer.”

And I can’t pretend that doesn’t sting, because I know distance is separating us, but that doesn’t mean she has to let it come in between us.

Finally, I sigh, and say, “Okay, fine. So, the Diary. What do I do?”

Becca sighs too, but it’s her long, painful sigh, the one that says I want to help you but I’m not a miracle worker. “I guess the best thing you can do is try to disprove the troll, right?”

“Okay,” I say, “but how can I disprove a troll who’s right?”

And really, really dedicated. They make new posts every few hours—probably have a whole queue full of them—and I’ve been mostly silent on the Diary since they started. I’m hoping the Bookstore Babe Meet Cute story will be enough to distract people for a while, but honestly, I feel like I’m just sticking a Band-Aid over a festering wound. Only a matter of time before the whole limb gets amputated.

“We just have to pick apart some of the faults in their logic,” Becca says. “Like, for instance, they start by citing statistics on the number of people who live in Miami, right? But everyone knows Miami is a tourist trap. You can just say that people were visiting.”

It’s not the worst plan, but it feels kind of feeble. It’s easy to lose people’s trust, but it’s not so easy to get it back.

“Do you really think they’ll buy into it if I post that?” I say.

Becca laughs. “Obviously not. I’ll post it from a separate blog. They’ll be more likely to believe it if it comes from someone not affiliated with the Diary.”

“Sweet! Love you!” I say, and just like that, it feels like Becca’s back to solving all my problems, just like she always has.

Step 3: The Invitation